Henry Roth - Call It Sleep

IX

WITHOUT telling his mother where he was going he had started out early that morning for Aunt Bertha’s candy store. It had been a long walk, but high hopes had buoyed him up. And now he saw a few blocks away the gilded mortar and pestle above a certain drugstore window. That was Kane Street. His breast began pounding feverishly as he drew near.

What if she didn’t have any skates. No! She must have! He turned the corner, walked east. A few houses and there was the candy store. He’d look into the window first. Jumping up eagerly on the iron scrolls of the cellar railing beside the store window, he pressed his nose against the glass, scrutinized the display. A wild, garish clutter of Indian bonnets, notebooks, pencil boxes, pasteboard females, American flags, uncut strips of battleships and ball players — but no skates for his flitting eyes to light upon. Hope wavered. No, they must be inside. Aunt Bertha would be foolish to keep anything so valuable in the window.

He peered in through a crevice in the chaos. Seated behind the counter, one hand poising a dripping roll above a coffee cup, Aunt Bertha had turned her head toward the rear of the store and was bawling at someone inside. David could hear her voice coming through the doorway. He got down from the rail, sidled around the edge of the window and went in—

“Sluggards! Bedbugs foul!” she shrilled unaware of his entrance. “Esther! Polly! Will you get up! Or shall I spit my lungs out at you! Quick, stinking heifers, you hear me! No?”

Aunt Bertha had changed since David had seen her last. Uncorseted, she looked fatter now, frowsier. The last remnant of tidiness in her appearance had vanished. Her heavy breasts, sagging visibly against her blouse, stained by fruit juice and chocolate, flopped slovenly from side to side. Fibres of her raffia-coarse red hair twined her moist throat. But her face was strangely thin and taut as though a weight where her apron bulged were dragging the skin down. “Wait!” she continued. “Wait till your father comes. Hi! He’ll rend you with his teeth! Stinking sluts, it’s almost nine!” She turned. “Vell?” and recognizing him. “David!” The hectic light in her eyes melted into pleasure. “David! My little bon-bon! You?”

“Yea!”

“Come here!” she spread fat arms like branches. “Let me give you a kiss, my honey-comb! I haven’t seen you in — how long? And Mama, why doesn’t she come? And how is your father?” Her eyes opened fiercely. “Still mad?” She submerged him in a fat embrace that reeked of perspiration flavored with coffee.

“Mama is all right.” He squirmed free. “Papa too.”

“What are you doing here? Did you come alone? All this long way?”

“Yes, I—”

“Want some candy? Ha! Ha! I know you, sly one!” She reached into a case. “Hea, I giff you an pineepple vit’ emmend. Do I speak English better?”

“Yea.” He pocketed them.

“End a liddle suddeh vuddeh?”

“No, I don’t want it.” He answered in Yiddish. For some reason he found himself preferring his aunt’s native speech to English.

“And so early!” She rattled on admiringly. “Not like my two wenches, sluggish turds! And you’re younger than they. If only you were mine instead of— Cattle!” She broke off furiously. “Selfish, mouldering hussies! All they know is to snore and guzzle! I’ll husk them out of bed now, God help me!” But just as she started heavily for the doorway, a man stepped into the store.

“Hello! Hello!” He called loudly. “What are you scurrying off for? Because I came in?”

“No-o! God forbid!” she exclaimed with mock vehemence. “How fares a Jew?”

“How fares it with all Jews? A bare living. Can you spare me a thousand guilders?”

“Ha! Ha! What a jester! The only green-rinds I ever see are what I peel from cucumbers.” And turning to David. “Go in, sweet one! Tell them I’ll sacrifice them for the sake of heathens if they don’t get up! That’s my sister’s only one,” she explained.

“Comely,” admitted the other.

David hesitated, “You want me to go in?”

“Yes! Yes! Perhaps you’ll shame the sows into rising.”

“Your fledgelings are still in the nest?”

“And what else?” disgustedly. “Lazy as cats. Go right in, my bright.”

Reluctantly, David squeezed past her, and casting a last vain glance at the jumbled shelves, pushed the spring door forward and went in. Beyond the narrow passageway, cramped even closer by the stumpy mottled columns on pasteboard boxes carelessly piled, the kitchen opened up with a stale reek of unwashed frying pans. The wooden table in the center was bare except for a half-filled bottle of ketchup with a rakish cap. Pots, one in another, still squatted on the gas-stove. From a corner of the stove-tray under the burners, coffee dripped to a puddle on the floor. The sink was stacked with dishes, and beside it on the washtub a bagful of rolls lay spilled all over. Splayed newspapers, crumpled garments, shoes, stockings, hung from the chairs or littered the floor. There were three doors, all closed, one on either side and one with a broom against it opening on the yard.

— Gee! Dirty.… Which one?

A giggle at his left. He approached cautiously.

“Is she commin’?” A guarded voice inside.

“Sh!”

“Hey,” he called out in a non-committal voice, “Yuh momma wants you sh’d ged op!”

“Who’re you?” Challengingly from the other side.

“It’s me, Davy.”

“Davy who?”

“Davy Schearl, Tanta Boita’s nephew.”

“Oh! So open de daw.”

He pushed it back — The clinging stench of dried urine. Lit by a small window that gave upon the squalid grey bricks of an airshaft, the room was gloomy. Only after a few seconds had passed did the features of the two heads that pronged the grey, mussed coverlets separate from the murk.

“It’s him!” A voice from the pillow.

“So wodda yuh wan’?” He finally distinguished the voice as Esther’s.

“I tol’ yuh,” he repeated. “Yuh momma wants yuh sh’d get op. She tol’ me I shul tell yuh.” The message delivered, he began to retreat.

“Comm beck!” Imperiously. “Dope! Wodda yuh wan’ in duh staw I asked.”

“N-nott’n.”

“So waddaye comm hea fuh?” Polly demanded suspiciously. “Kendy?”

“No, I didn’. I jost comm to see Tanta Boita.”

“Aaa, he’s full of hoss-cops — C’mon, Polly!” Esther was the one nearest the wall. “Ged out!” She sat up.

Polly clung to the covers. “Ged oud yuhself foist.”

“Yuh bedder! Yuh hoid w’ad mama said.”

“So led ’er say.” Peevishly.

“I ain’ gonna clean de kitchen by myself,” Esther stood up on the bed. “You’ll ged!”

“Don’ cross over me. Id’s hard luck.”

“I will if yuh don’ ged out!”

“You jus’ try — go over by my feet—”

But even as she spoke, Esther jumped over her.

“Lousy bestia!” Polly screeched. And as her sister jounced with unsure footing on the bed, she clutched at the hem of her nightgown and yanked her back. Esther tumbled heavily against the wall.

“Ow! Rotten louse!” Esther screamed in return. “Yuh hoit my head.” And swooping down on the coverlets, flung them back. “Yeee!” she squawled as Polly, taken by surprise lay for an instant with nightgown above naked navel, “Yeee! Free show! Free show!”

“Free show, yuhself!” Furiously, Polly clawed at the other’s nightgown. “Yuh stinkin’ fraid cat! Shame! Shame! Free show!” Immediately four bare thighs kicked, squirmed and locked, and the two sisters rolled about in bed, slapping each other and shrieking. After a minute of this, the disheveled Esther, with a last vicious slap, at the other, broke loose, leapt from the bed and squealing rushed past David into the kitchen.